


Cat Meeting

by tatersalad5001



Series: For Our Dreams [2]
Category: Yu-Gi-Oh! VRAINS
Genre: Alternate Universe - Roommates/Housemates, Established Relationship, M/M, Mild Language, Slice of Life, it's an au where the ignis are cats [shrugs] that's really it, it's just cat shenanigans and probably also yusaku and takeru shenanigans but yknow
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-03-13
Updated: 2019-06-08
Packaged: 2019-11-13 18:08:32
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 2
Words: 1,574
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18036308
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/tatersalad5001/pseuds/tatersalad5001
Summary: Usually, Ai's help involved getting in the way and slowing Yusaku down. But it was the thought that counted, right?Yusaku came back carrying Ai in his arms, Ai struggling to get out of his grasp. "I've captured a criminal."





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> alternate title: the best kind of medicine is love from another (cat)
> 
> so like, yeah. this is, an au. i did vrains rarepair weeks awhile back when that was going on and at least a few things i wrote i was like, yeah i could keep going on writing this and like, that sort of thing. this...is part of that. So!
> 
> One of the prompts was Pets/Sickfic, I decided to use both (in chapter 7 of Candles Lighting up the Darkness) and made this sort of...au. The rules of this specific universe are: Ai and Flame (and all the Ignis, probably) are cats, Yusaku and Takeru live together in An Apartment or something like that so they've both got Ai and Flame, who were strays that found Yusaku and Takeru separately before the two started living together and now all four of them are chilling together, and Yusaku and Takeru are Already Dating before anything written for this universe. Hanoi Project stuff still vaguely happened here but like, no card games! no card games here. Yusaku has a Switch though
> 
> The actual thing I wrote probably serves as a better introduction than this so if you haven't read that and want to its in chapter 7 of Candles Lighting up the Darkness. If you don't want to, though, this'll probably be fine on its own so that's fine. Uh, Ai's a black and white cat. Flame's an orange cat.
> 
> This is basically gonna be, 1) cat shenanigans, and 2) life is hard and we're depressed here and moving on from some things is hard but maybe we can move on with the power of Each Other and Cats (so literally, the best kind of medicine is the love of another [cat]). this is probably just gonna be that don't expect much (in terms of length of content [chapters] or content itself), sorry

Yusaku collapsed on the couch, burying his face in his hands.

Fuck, he was tired.

There was no reason for this. He'd just woken up. He'd gotten plenty of sleep. But, well, he almost always woke up more tired than when he'd fallen asleep, hadn't he? There was always too much on his mind, or too much to do, or... He'd never been good at sleeping, really. He tried to be, but it never seemed to work out.

It wasn't his fault.

He heard the light sound of something landing on the couch not far from him. Looking up, Yusaku saw that Ai had jumped onto the couch, sniffing the seat around him. Yusaku smiled for a short moment, watching Ai investigate the area, until he remembered almost a second too late the cup of milk sitting between himself and Ai. Just as Ai was closing the distance between himself and the cup, Yusaku reached over and lifted the glass high up in the air.

"Oh, no." Yusaku's voice was flat while he mocked Ai. "Where did it go?"

Ai gave Yusaku the most innocent look he could muster, which was pretty convincing most of the time. Pretending he wasn't after the drink at all, was he? Ai could be pretty unobservant at times, not noticing obvious things around him (such as his own food), but Yusaku knew better than to think Ai hadn't noticed his drink at all. He wasn't born yesterday. He'd seen Ai's face stuffed into far too many glasses.

Rolling his eyes, Yusaku sat the glass down to his other side before fading back into the world of semi-consciousness. He needed at least two more hours before he was functional.

With his mission ruined, Ai jumped up onto the back of the couch and walked towards Yusaku's head. Settling down, he curled up with a paw stretched out on Yusaku's shoulder, his head shoved into Yusaku's neck. Yusaku leaned his head back against the couch and stared at the ceiling. He needed to figure out how to wake up.

He stayed like that as time passed, occasionally waking up enough to remember to force down some of his drink. 

About an hour later, Takeru walked into the room. Ai's head shot up as his excitement over Takeru's presence. Yusaku barely registered Takeru was there.

"Hey, Ai." Takeru laughed to himself.

Ai rolled over in joy over the attention. His roll, however, pushed his balance too far towards the front of the couch. As Ai fell back into the seat, his limbs flailed out in panic.

"Ah!" Yusaku was, suddenly, completely awake. His hand flew to the side of his chin to put pressure against the stinging pain there. 

"Oh!" Takeru watched as Ai landed on the couch, then jumped onto the floor. "Are you okay, Ai?" 

Ai stared up at Takeru as he sat down on the floor.

That question answered, Takeru looked up at Yusaku, who hadn't moved since Ai started to fall. "Did he scratch you?"

" _Yeah_. ...He didn't mean to, but... Shit." Yusaku slowly moved his hand away from his face and examined his fingers. Okay. No blood. That was good.

Takeru looked closely at his face. "Ooh, that's pretty red."

"Ugh." Yusaku shot a look down at Ai. "You're a menace, you know that? You're mean."

Ai's tail twitched as he looked briefly back at Yusaku.

* * *

Takeru looked at the paper bag in his hands, then down towards the floor. Both Ai and Flame were sitting in front of him, staring up at him.

"Huh." Takeru looked between the bag and the cats once again. "What're you two up to? You want the bag?"

Flame answered him with a short, punctuated meow. Ai's tail twitched, but he stayed silent.

"Well, maybe they'll like it," Takeru mumbled to himself. With a shrug, he dropped the bag on the floor and sat down in a chair. He had a lot of homework to do, unfortunately, enough that he couldn't ignore it all now and put it off until later. Getting out his math homework, he mentally prepared himself to be settled there, working, for awhile. And with a sigh, he made himself start. Resting his answer sheet against the armrest of the chair, he worked on the first question.

Around three problems in, he got a weird feeling. He looked down towards the floor to see Ai staring up at him.

"You want to snuggle?" He smiled as Ai watched him talk. "You can, you know. You can come up here."

Ai made a happy noise as he jumped up on the chair and settled onto Takeru's lap. Takeru chuckled as he went back to the task at hand.

Five problems later, however, a loud noise distracted him. He looked up towards the source. 

Flame had just dove into the bag he'd left on the floor. A few seconds later, he peeked his head out of the bag to look at Takeru.

"You like the bag, huh?" Takeru laughed. 

Without answering, Flame rolled onto his back and began kicking and chewing the bag. Ai's head shot up to find the source of the noise as well. He watched Flame, but otherwise didn't move.

"Okay, then." Takeru turned back to his work. "I'll make sure Yusaku knows not to throw the bag away, then."

 


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> (mario voice) thank you so much for a reading my fic
> 
> i don't have much else to say about it other than uh, it's short, but chapter 2 is here. cats are back. and that's a yeehaw from me

Flame stared up at Takeru from the floor, now free from the cat carrier, and whined.

“I know, buddy.” Takeru bent down to pat Flame on the head. “You don’t like driving, you don’t like going to the vet. But you survived!”

It had just been a regular check-up visit. Just to make sure Flame was doing well. Most of the visit had gone well. Flame was doing well, wasn’t sick or anything like that. But there had been one piece of bad news.

Flame kept looking at Takeru as he meowed again. A short meow that conveyed Flame’s impatience and demands perfectly. He was very talkative when he wanted something.

“Sorry. I know you were a good boy, and I know you’re very cute.” Takeru picked Flame up and stood back up straight, with one hand under Flame’s back paws and Flame’s front paws over his shoulders. “But they said you need to lose weight. Only a few treats a day, and you already had plenty earlier.”

Flame quieted down. Takeru could hear him purring, like he was almost always was. A thrash of his tail revealed Flame was still annoyed.

“You’re so spoiled.” Takeru sighed as he rested his chin against Flame’s head. “I’m not even the one who started giving you treats, that was Grandpa. You’re just spoiled because we love you, but clearly you’re a bit too spoiled.”

Flame kept purring in his arms, his tail still thrashing back and forth.

This was going to be a very long adjustment period for Flame.

* * *

It was over a decade ago when things all went to hell. Still, scars didn’t fade that easily.

Takeru lost his parents. Both he and Yusaku lost themselves. Neither of them let people in easily. Yusaku only had a couple of friends, and Takeru could probably count the number of friends he had on one hand, too. It was a miracle they had connected with each other as easily as they had.

It’s not like they’d known each other ever since both their lived were ruined. They found each other much later, pulled together as if they were magnets. But in the time they knew each other, Yusaku didn’t smile much. His smiles were worth the wait, though; whenever Yusaku smiled at him, it was better than the most beautiful sunset. His smiles were hard to earn, but Takeru felt truly special whenever he did.

Smiles were rare. Yusaku almost never laughed.

So when Takeru walked out of the kitchen holding his lunch, hearing Yusaku _laugh_ caught him off guard.

When Takeru actually looked at Yusaku, however, he could see why.

Ai was sitting in Yusaku’s lap, headbutting Yusaku’s chin and sniffing his face. Ai was purring loudly, of course. He always purred loudly, and purred very often, though not as often as Flame. A few seconds after Takeru started watching Ai, Ai reached his head up to start licking Yusaku’s hair, which only made him laugh harder.

“Someone likes you,” Takeru commented.

“It feels so weird,” Yusaku managed to respond after a moment. “I can’t stop laughing.”

“He must’ve figured you needed a good laugh.” Takeru laughed himself as Ai continued bathing Yusaku’s hair. “I’m not sure I could let him lick my hair though.”

Yusaku took a couple of deep breaths as he started being able to control his laughter. “My hair’s getting washed soon anyway, so I don’t care about that. Apparently he thinks I should’ve washed my hair sooner.”

Clearly, Ai liked Yusaku a lot. Yusaku had told Takeru once that Ai used to be afraid of people. Now, Ai was walking all over Yusaku, bathing him, letting him hold him, and that all took a lot of trust on Ai’s part.

Ai had a talent for making Yusaku smile. Oh, Ai liked to cause trouble and get on Yusaku’s nerve. But Ai had a much easier time getting Yusaku to smile than most people did.

Yusaku often had trouble actually feeling happy. Seeing him this happy, seeing him smile and Ai getting him to actually laugh, was something Takeru couldn’t get enough of.

**Author's Note:**

> catch me on tumblr as [datanamines](https://datanamines.tumblr.com)


End file.
